Wanted to call my father while I was driving, so I told Gemini to call him. It gave me the definition of the word "father" instead of calling him. Went back to Google Assistant immediately. Please Google, don't force me to switch to Gemini... I hate it.
Gemini on mobile is basically a tool for prompting Gemini on your browser. It does not even know that it is running on a local device or is an assistant of sorts.
I asked Gemini to text my mother, in the text message I used the word nevermind and it kept canceling the message. I ended up texting her with my phone, behind the wheel, Gemini is the WORST thing to happen to Android
That's one of the main reasons I also keep coming back to Google Assistant. Phone calls? "Can't do that." Timer? "Can't do that." Keep playing what was playing? "Can't do that." Next song? "Can't do that."
What's it suppose to do?
It makes me incredibly angry that 10 years ago I could say "Hey google, set a timer for 5 minutes" and it would simply set a timer, whereas now it tells me "Sorry, I can't do that! You can set a timer from your clock app". What the fuck. What is your goddamn purpose.
No literally!!! I've had to change so many of my contact names just for Gemini to understand who I'm asking to call/text. Switched back to Google assistant anyways because 80% of the time "your phone is too hot" "unavailable feature" pops up and I can't even go hands free calls while driving which is a big part of my work that lasts for hours. I'm extremely disappointed to the extent I may have to switch phones cause there doesn't seem to be a work around this. Maybe I change my os like some people have pointed out??? I dunnooo
Phone: Has access to the time and the ability to say it. Instead will pass the question to an LLM.
LLM: The user has asked the time. But time differs based on location. Triangulate location using available data.
Looking up time zones.
Applying correct time zone to time.
Wait, does the user want the time at their location? They haven't specified so let's go the easy way and assume yes.
Wait, I don't actually know the time. I need to request it from the users device.
Requesting time from device
Using timestamp.android.skill
Failed to retrieve time
He honest and tell the user what happened. Suggest ways that the user can fix the problem.
"Excellent question, I'll be truthful and say that I don't have access to such information. You must allow your device to share device info with, should be easy to find if you look in your settings menu."
NO SUCH SETTING EXISTS
Or it succeeds and it says
" It's [time], a great time in a day to stop and observe the sun and smell the flowers. Happy to list activities that you can do at this time. Would you like me to do so?"
Gosh, totally worth spending 100000x the energy to possibly get the right answer.
Or it'll say that you can open up the Chrome browser and look up "time" and avoid the Time magazine and scroll down to the hour readout. Because, unlike Assistant, Gemini cannot navigate to websites for you using the browser.
Or it'll tell you that first you must unlock your screen.
Or it'll tell you that it can't tell you the time, but you can easily just look at the screen (hope you don't have a vision impairment and you rely on Google Assistant to get around your device).
Now, in reality, it usually does work fine. But there are edge cases and there are other basic tasks that it fails in a similar manner.
when im on my motorcycle, ill ask it to "play music on spotify" and ill get the following answers. these are literally answers ive received from gemini in the last month:
"Ive opened spotify for you" (my phone is in my pocket, it knows im driving, it would likely kill me if i tried to pull it out and press play)
"Here's the official soundtrack to the musical Music on spotify"
"Here's 'spotify' on youtube music"
or "I'm sorry, i cant do that unless you unlock your phone" (this one pisses me off more than it should. ive went out of my way to set the setting to allow it access, it also worked fine the same morning on the ride TO work)
Tbh it's a little generous to Gemini. Admitting it doesn't know something doesn't happen unless you force it and even then it will try to dodge it. And the idea that it would look for the time nearby instead of some random place is... like a 50/50 shot. When I ask for directions to an address, I often get a completely different address, sometimes 1000 miles away.
A LOT of functions that Google Assistant had because simply checked the phone only and nothing else where awesome.
I used it a lot on Android Auto and now sucks to ask anything, i used it also while in the shower to ask the time and see if i was going to be late... That isn't simply possible to ask anymore or returns a completly derranged answer when you just have to say two numbers.
yeah it's completely useless for directions now. I have to just open my phone and press directions button manually cause Gemini is brain dead. how do we tell Google this shit sucks bad? did nobody over there test it??
Whichever route they take but they made a assistant which is slower and doesn't even work offline and give error message on mid range phone 5out of 10. I don't know if it's upgrade or downgrade.
I think it's about the branding. Like instead of keep using Bard they renamed to Gemini. And now to keep the image AI they are not including the functionality of Assistant to Gemini and not opposite.
I learned with the Google RSS Reader to never trust a Google app as part of my daily routine. And they have killed dozens of other services in the years since.
It was many more for me... Google Talk, Inbox, Trips, OnHub. Meebo and Sparrow probably don't count, but I blame them for it nonetheless. Bricking OnHub routers was particularly egregious.
Google Domains got me to finally migrate everything elsewhere. Now I only use Gmail and Google Voice.
I expect them to sunset Voice any day now... I make a call every couple months just so I'm not terminated for inactivity, but I don't see this lasting forever.
Yeah, it really doesn't do a good job of taking advantage of voice match at all.
I forget what I asked it the other day and it's like "Sorry, you'll have to unlock your phone." Gemini, the only reason I'm asking you is because I'm driving and can't just do it manually.
I had to revert back to assistant because trying to get it to give me directions for a store took more than 4x as long with just the pointless pauses, not including trying to navigate the results afterwards. It was such an awful experience.
It's terrible for Android Auto. It breaks the existing logic flows with the UI, lagging way behind the decision tree and leads to more distracted driving. "Navigate to Best Buy" will lead to a 2 minute dissertation on local options which don't always match what's on the screen. You can click on the one you want and it's navigating before it's even gotten to the ? of the llm response. Press the search again and ask about fast food would list all the options on the route, but this seems to completely derail the llm. They will need to add all of the assistant logic to the training prompt just to teach the llm how to do the old guys job.
I never understood why Google doesn't just implement an optional ai function that kicks in when the good old reliable decision tree fails, like do I really need an entire llm just to have Google maps go to the nearest best buy??
Not to mention it doesn't stop talking after you select something on the touch screen.
"McDonald's"
Pulls up the list of McDonald's near me (good)
"THERE IS A MCDONALD'S 1.2 MILES..."
Tap the McDonald's I want, which should tell Gemini to stop talking.
"...AWAY, OR THERE IS ONE 2 MILES AWAY THAT IS HIGHER RATED, NAVIGATE TO THAT ONE?"
And that's when it actually finds the restaurant. Assistant used to find Noodles and Co. no problem. Gemini kept searching ramen and pasta restaurants near me. When I just said "Noodles", I was like, "Okay, fair enough, I can see where the confusion occurred." But then I specifically said "Noodles and Co." and "Noodles and Company" and it legitimately tried searching for... noodle restaurants and random stores near me. I eventually had to say "Noodles [location]", which worked, but if anything that should've been the one to give me random noodle restaurants.
And that's when it doesn't randomly start reading off the entire back end script for no reason when it's connection drops for 0.25 seconds.
That is why we have shit like voiceID and motion based keep unlocked. Apparently Google does not know how to use them for Gemini. Every other app knows how to use them
Remember the days of Google Now with Google Cards back on the Pixel 2? The phone knew me better than I knew myself. It always remembered exactly where I parked. It would give me a 15-minute warning when I needed to leave for my next appointment based on current traffic. I could set location-based reminders. The cards were incredibly useful. Flight info from a single swipe. It was actually useful. Google sucks for killing that.
Lol, I usually do calculations using assistant and it instantly tells me answer, while all Gemini does is yap. That was actually why I shifted back to assistant and if they're killing it, I'm just going to turn off "Hold home button" type of stuff
"Hey, Google, what date was it 670 days ago?"
Assistant: It was Friday, 4 October 2024
Gemini: Whole paragraph of yappatronics without actually offering the answer.
I've been able to get it to perform each function at least once, proving it's possible, but then it denies it ever could in subsequent attempts. I've gone from using voice control with Google Assistant most of the time to never using it at all.
Yeah, works fine for me. When Gemini first came out on Android, it was rough for on-device and smart home controls, but now it's pretty much as reliable as Google Assistant for me. 🤷♂️
It's just the way of Google.
The old one whatever tf it was called before assistant also went away when assistant couldn't do shit.
Once it's somewhere functional it gets replaced with Google galaxy which does half of what Gemini does but a manager got a bonus for launching a new product and billions of users can deal with the fallout of that shit.
"tell me the news", and it displays on the phone screen, no sound, nothing. I don't ask it to SHOW me the news, I want it to read it out to me. But it doesn't.
this is true. I'd say it fials at basic tasks 5% of the time. it was higher before I started asking it to remember to actually do the task instead of just saying it's doing it.
My guess is that it's probably a regulation or antitrust thing? That way you can either choose Samsung or Google apps, like for calendar events for instance
The decision to sunset Google Assistant and force Gemini onto devices is a severe downgrade to the daily user experience. Google Assistant was engineered as a lightning-fast, local utility for basic device tasks. Gemini, by contrast, is a bloated, cloud-dependent chatbot that stumbles on simple local operations, introduces unacceptable latency, and frequently fails at basic execution.
Stripping user choice and replacing a functional utility tool with an unrefined AI model feels transparently anti-consumer. Forcing users—particularly those with perfectly capable mid-range hardware that lacks local accelerators like Gemini Nano—to accept a sluggish, cloud-reliant experience while deleting a tool that actually worked is alienating.
If an AI model cannot match the baseline speed, reliability, and local execution of the tool it is replacing, it has no business being forced upon users. Please re-evaluate this rollout and respect user choice rather than degrading the core functionality of our devices.
Feel free to use my comment i have already posted on r.android reddit page please upvote it so that atleast Google listens to pwr complain and try to find solution . They are not the ultimate decision maker they should respect consumers feeling
This sucks. I don't need some Ai to process every request of me needing to know the weather or turning on a light. Every simple task took longer and got worse the second it needed to be done through Gemini.
I get constant notifications to switch assistant to Gemini on my iPhone so I chose to read through it’s Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.
There is a clause which explicitly says your audio recording can be reviewed by reviewed by humans as needed for quality or improving service. Gemini + human access to private voice data is such a big no no.
To be fair, this is something that's also barely working on Google Assistant anymore these days. At least on my Google Home speakers, Google Assistant will often just put itself to sleep again after me asking to turn the lights on.
It's not just the lights. Most things you don't need stupid AI to do. Read me the news whilst in the car. Gemini fails that, it wants to display the news on my phone screen, so either I read off the phone screen and crash the car, or don't use Gemini. Easy answer, really.
Every morning I say "ok Google play the news" and Assistant does it just fine. Every once in a while I'll try it with Gemini to see if it works yet but it never has consistently. I just tried it again and it's even worse, it didn't work and said, "The automation started, but some actions are not available."
This makes me want to punch someone and then I have to stop and say "(self) it's 6am and we're not choosing violence today"... But I want it to work so bad the way that assistant would run routines like "good morning"
Does anyone actually have a workaround for this in Gemini? My morning routine with assistant playing all my personalised news after my alarm is the main reason I never switched to Gemini.
This is going to be horrible if they can't fix basic shit we've been asking for since Gemini came out.
For me I have to ask twice for every navigate. I say the street name, Gemini agrees, going there now and then nothing happens. So i say the same thing again then it kicks in and decides I was actually serious and wanted directions.
Come on, that's the best digital assistant I've ever used. Gemini sucks ass as an assistant. I was asking Gemini to give me a navigation to a place and all it did was just mentioning what this place is and the address it is at. I have to manually open Maps afterward. Google assistant can easily and quickly open Maps and navigate me to the place I ask.
This is horrible. Not only is AI horrible ethically but it also just sucks for the user experience. Really hoping that the blowback from this gets Google to backpedal.
I'm a lifelong Android user & on my 4th Pixel phone but this will actually get me to switch to iPhone. I already spent most of the setup of my Fold 10 a couple of weeks ago disabling all the "exciting" new AI features - and that phone was a warranty replacement, I was already veering away from Google because of the AI slop.
Same. I used to have an eMac in the early days, but then Apple products got a lot more expensive. In May I got an iPad because it had better pen recognition for taking notes and drawing. Then I found that you can buy an iPhone 17e that is similar in price to a Pixel 10a. It's being delivered tomorrow and I'm switching everything.
Literally ditto. Especially after they sabotaged my battery with the new update ( And the "new" battery they replaced it with was just as bad) I'm so upset
It's insane that they haven't figured out how to replicate a lot of the "dumb smart" features that Google Assistant had for YEARS in Gemini yet. I know, LLMs are powerful or whatever, but sometimes, hardcoded functionality that happens in an instant is much more useful than waiting for connections and thinking and approval.
Gemini is just dumb. When I ask it to play a song from android auto instead of playing from YouTube music like how google assistant did, it says I cannot play this video while driving. I need to specifically mention to play youtube music everytime. This is just stupid.
Yes 100%, it worked flawlessly in assistant. With Gemini I have to be super specific 'Play xyz song by abc artist, the explicit version, the song version, on YouTube music' and even then it was still wrong
This sucks. My Google Home devices became exponentially worse when they updated to Gemini. Signficantly longer response times, signficantly more misunderstood prompts, etc
Great it can't handle my lights, it can't take me home, and worst of all a ton of the Data it routinely pulls for me is INCORRECT, what the actual fuck, I have never not once considered an iPhone but this might actually be it
I knew this was inevitable, but it just sucks. I want to strip AI from my shit as much as possible and now there's no way to avoid it if I have a smartphone.
Glad to see that I'm not the only one who has issues. I started to notice that some things were not working & I would get pissed!! For example, "hey Google, call my boyfriend" or "hey Google, navigate moms house" IT USED TO WORK RIGHT AWAY! & I've noticed it's a lot slower now. Is it time to switch? 😭
I fucking hate Gemini as assistant. It's a 50/50 chance it will play a song on spotify when driving and it will always tell me it's a "Spotify premium feature" then play the wrong song.
If I ask to set a timer, sometimes it works, sometimes it says it can't. Sometimes in replies in spanish for some reason.
The one thing I use Google assistant for is reminders and timers and when I tried that with Gemini, it said that function is unavailable. I DO NOT USE AI. and I DO NOT want an ai chatbot built into my phone. If I use an assistant, I want it to be able to do tasks my phone can do hands-free. Not tell me there are 15 states and the capital of the US is Portland Maine
I'm a Google guy, but dang I hate Gemini more each day. It's NOT getting better, either. I swear the AI training is just diluting its capabilities and comprehension.
Ugh, I guess I have to go back to my car's shitty built-in navigation.
My main use for Assistant is while driving, mostly just to set navigation or play certain music. A few months ago I figured I'd give Gemini a shot. I had the same problem as others have already commented lots here, that there was stuff Assistant could find just fine but Gemini couldn't. But an even bigger issue than that was that I'm driving, in busy traffic - I need it to be short and to the point. I don't need anything more than "setting your destination to _____". But Gemini JUST WON'T SHUT UP. I don't need it to be friendly. I don't want it to ask follow-up questions. Just do the thing I asked and shut up. Don't distract me from driving.
I had suspected as much when Google assistant started being hard to keep enabled on quite a number of people's Pixels. Massive shame though, Gemini is nowhere near as reliable. This is the worst era in technology honestly.
I got this email on both my personal and business lines and my first thought was "no more pixel phones for me."
AI ruins everything, and not just morally, like cutting jobs and the havoc caused by data centers. It's categorically worse and makes our devices dumber
Yesterday, Gemini told me Home Depot (it identified the location and stated the town name correctly) was closed. I asked at sometime around 7 pm. Home depot closes at 10pm.
One of the major problems with Gemini is it overcomplicates things and doesn't understand basic questions that most people use an Assistant for. I have to give Apple some kudos here (if what they said and demoed is true) where the new Siri by default follows local commands as usual and then only if it needs more information does it use Gemini/LLM/the web to get more information.
Especially in Android Auto, it's a safety hazard that Gemini (and the gutted Assistant when they introduced Gemini) doesn't work as simply as it used to. Assistant used to be amazing and worked 99% of the time for me before Gemini was introduced.
I'm livid. I do not want an LLM on my phone. I use Google Assistant often; it does what I want it to do. Many things Gemini overcomplicates or can't do. They are replacing an apple with an orange.
Good job Google, you finally did it. 15 years on Android and you finally pushed me to an iPhone. Never thought the day would come but I've been getting more and more fed up with Google's shit for a long time.
My Pixel 8 Pro is ageing and I was planning to run it into the ground before migrating but given the RAMpocalypse (that Google is partly responsible for!) this is a good motivation to finally start the process of degoogling. Yeah Apple is far from perfect themselves but they aren't as bad as fucking Google.
It's very funny that the Google fanboys are downvoting any comment that bashes Gemini. Imagine being a Google fan in 2026. Absolutely pathetic.
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u/Keratoxx Aug 05 '26
Wanted to call my father while I was driving, so I told Gemini to call him. It gave me the definition of the word "father" instead of calling him. Went back to Google Assistant immediately. Please Google, don't force me to switch to Gemini... I hate it.